The newest Astronomer’s Telegram of the S-CUBED team is now live! We have detected a new X-ray binary outburst in the SMC with our weekly observations. SXP 8.80 is the second of its kind to go off in 3 months and another interesting source to track! 🔭✨ www.astronomerstelegram.org?read=17246

g+ GameFlow: MLS Next Pro Regular Season Huntsville City FC v Chattanooga FC on May 17, 2025. #HNTvCFC ⚽️🤖

Absolute highway robbery in Huntsville tonight. 3 points to CFC in a match where they got thoroughly outplayed. 2 goals against the run of play. A penalty saved in the 90’. What a game.

Introducing MLS Next Pro’s Race to the Playoffs! We’re 8 matches into a 28 match season. Over the next 10 matches, we will see teams start to make their push for early playoff qualification. Use this as a handy guide to see when teams cross last year’s “playoff safety zone”!

Data from yesterday’s Chattanooga FC game. For the one of the first times this season, CFC underperforms in a draw instead of in a win or loss. Ancelin’s breakaway in the 81’ ends up being the difference. We may be seeing some regression to the mean happening. You can’t play that lucky forever!

I duplicated this plot for the MLS Next Pro season. Chattanooga FC’s value makes no sense at all. 1.6 points above expected over a 6 match stretch is an insane run of form for the Blues. It doesn’t feel sustainable, but it’s a hell of a ride while it lasts.

The ratio of blue to red in this video is heartwarming.

Update: Only 1 section (211) still has tickets available on the south side. The atmosphere tonight is going to be unbelievable.

I’m anxious about the Chattanooga match tonight, so I cooked up a few xG plots for MLS Next Pro to help calm me down. Interesting to see how lucky some teams are running, including Chattanooga (noisy sample of 3-4 games). North Texas surely cannot keep giving up over 3 goals per game.

I have never been more nervous about a soccer match than I am today. Sometimes a sporting event is about more than just the game. Today is one of those times. Anyways, Go CFC!

Homework: Read this excellent piece by tomorrow. Good versus Evil is about to be personified as the Soccer Wars find their newest venue in the heart of the south. There is only one team who should be supported. Chattanooga will always be blue.

I’m tired of hearing “it’s just Panama” from US fans. They’ve beat us in four of the last five competitive matchups, it’s time to put some respect on their name. There’s a clear top four in CONCACAF right now and we might be #4.

With MLS NEXT Pro Matchday 2 about to kick off, I decided to run some calculations. Based on the Elo ratings that I derived a few months ago, I can forecast the match outcomes of MLSNP games. Here are the implied odds for the matches tonight. Let’s see how the Tom Model does throughout the season!

After a week traveling around Iceland, we finally got lucky with the Northern Lights! Thankful to finally get clear skies and dense solar winds to witness an auroral light show. I’ve seen a lot of astronomical events, but watching the aurorae dance above us one of my favorites that I’ve seen! 🔭

Since I’ve had so much success with Elo-based analysis of international soccer, I decided to bring it to a domestic league to try it out. I thus have created my own Elo ratings system for all MLS Next Pro teams! What is attached is the final Elo rating of all teams after each season.

NEW POD! The whole gang gets together to talk about our year that was and go over our 2025 New Year’s Resolutions, with a special off camera appearance by @astrotom.bsky.social!

The USMNT tables for player stats compared to opponent Elo naturally lend themselves to some scatter plots to learn about the player pool. This first one is average Elo of minutes compared to goal contributions per 90. Besides Vazquez and Pepi, you get a decent snapshot of the current #USMNT pool.

Yesterday, I was fortunate to have the opportunity to visit NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center for Swift’s 20th Anniversary. Unexpectedly, while we were there, we were fortunate to have a few minutes to watch the integration of the Roman Space Telescope with its science payload. 🔭

Happy 20th Anniversary to the Niel Gehrels Swift Observatory!! 20 years ago today, Swift launched from Cape Canaveral in Florida. Since then, it has contributed to so much science and found some really cool objects. Here’s to many more years of astronomy with Swift! #Swift20 🔭

At this point, I have compiled a very detailed spreadsheet of individual match data for all active and a few select retired USMNT players. After the November window, here are the numbers. It is interesting to see how productive players are and compare it to the difficulty of their opponents! #USMNT

One thing I’m watching for over the next few years for the USMNT is Christian Pulisic’s production compared to the historical production of Landon Donovan and Clint Dempsey. At about the halfway mark of their caps, Puli is running ahead of Dempsey and with Donovan on goal contributions.

As someone who is *in Kingston* right now, I have thoughts. Gonna make a thread of things in no particular order.

Ok #USMNT BlueSky, here are some stats on the US National Team player pool. The first plot tracks minutes versus goal contributions. The second plot tracks goal contributions and weights minutes by the Elo of US opponents. Interesting data and shows just how valuable Christian Pulisic is!

Since I’m new to 🔭 BlueSky, I figure I should introduce myself! My name is Thomas. I’m a 3rd year Ph.D. Student! I study Be/X-ray Binaries using Swift Observatory data. I work with multiwavelength time series data to study these binaries, discovering new systems and learning about known systems.

Here's a quick Starter Pack of Chattanooga FC fans. Reply to me if I missed you and I'll update tomorrow. Have a look! Chattanooga is blue!

MLB: Atlanta Braves NFL: Atlanta Falcons NHL: Nashville Predators NBA: Atlanta Hawks Soccer: Chattanooga FC, Atlanta United, New Mexico United, USMNT, USWNT College: Georgia, Penn State, Furman